PP NewsBrief: 2021-03-05

We need to begin to reclaim control over the institutions which have such oversized roles in our lives. As you read this people work tirelessly to see to it that you are dumb and docile. Let's stop them.

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5 ways they’re trying to trick you into taking the Covid “vaccine”

"1. Bribery

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Important to remember: “Getting back to normal” is a lie. As much as people repeat the mantra in soundbites and social media posts, the “experts” are clearer – many have said we will NEVER be going back to normal, and others have said we need to maintain anti-Covid measures until at least 2022. The “vaccine” itself does not even claim to limit transmission, even those vaccinated are still being ordered to follow the restrictions.

2. Celebrity Endorsements

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Important to remember: Celebrities – especially actors and TV personalities – are simply paid to repeat lines. Even if their intentions are correct, there’s no reason to assume any of them have any understanding of what they’re talking about. And none of these people has anything to lose should you or a loved one suffer any harm from taking an untested vaccine.

3. Forced “scarcity”

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Important to remember: It’s all total nonsense. They are not in any danger of “running out” of vaccines. And even if they are, scarcity is a marketing ploy, not an argument.

4. Fake “popularity”

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Important to remember: An opinion poll is no measure of reality, popularity is no measure of quality, and it is in the establishment’s interest to make all dissenters feel they are in a tiny minority.

5. “Resistance is useless”

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Important to remember: vaccine passports will only ever become “inevitable” once the vast majority of people have had the vaccine. If enough people refuse to take part, the program will never work."

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Bernays and Propaganda – The Transition to Education and Commerce – Part 4

"The success of Lippman and Bernays did not go unnoticed in many segments of American society. Universities in particular realised the potential of these new propaganda techniques to form, manipulate and control social perceptions and behavior. Schools and Universities in the US had never been viewed as an educational system but more as tools of a public disciplinary system, a method both of social control and a means to inculcate attitudes and beliefs most useful to the industrialists and bankers. This began before the time of Lippman and Bernays, with the great “Robber Barons”, the criminally rich families like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Mellon, Astor, DuPont, Guggenheim, Morgan, Vanderbilt. Andrew Carnegie first promoted the notion that the nation’s very rich should found universities in order to remake education to serve their needs. Many American industrialists joined this crusade, resulting in Stanford, Cornell, Carnegie-Mellon, the University of Chicago and many more. Their efforts were widely publicised as a kind of benevolent charity to the nation, but their purpose was not to educate but to indoctrinate, using the educational system to create citizens obedient to their capitalist ideology and maintain their financial power.

They meant these institutions to preach the standard religious mythologies of patriotism and democracy, but also the values of child labor, slave wages, anathema toward labor unions and opposition to minimum wages, as a scheme to maintain their income disparity, basically to inculcate public attitudes that would serve to prevent any transference of wealth to the masses. These industrial and financial elites played a heavy role in the transformation of America’s educational system, first from their financial control and second from their power to design and control the ideologies that would emerge in the curricula, setting the stage for the methods of American education today, in particular the US business schools. Perhaps the most important consideration about American education that is so poorly-appreciated is that the American elite did not want (and still do not want) to improve the nation’s education level because both the multi-party political system and the US brand of capitalism require ignorance for survival, both relying heavily for their success on a thoughtless, uninformed, and uneducated population.

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The purpose of the universities, in the view of these industrialists and bankers, was to develop by indoctrination a kind of management elite capable of controlling society in a way most useful to the top 1%. By the end of the First World War, the world was in the throes of a massive industrialisation as well as urbanisation, creating social stresses from problems of inequality and civil rights, with social unrest already a growing problem. To deal with this, American universities developed (under the tutelage of Lippman and Bernays) what they called the “social sciences” like sociology and psychology with the objective of producing a cadre of “social engineers and technicians” to address these issues and control American society. The ‘secret government’ believed that psychology, with the techniques so skillfully applied by Bernays, could “be instrumental for attaining democratic social order and control”. The theory was that individuals in society were not “well adjusted” and that propaganda could be used to appropriately “adjust” them. From this point, with the educational system as a major instrument, the US transitioned into a society of social engineering and control, using Bernays’ methods directly upon primary, high school and university students to form and manipulate public perceptions and beliefs in a manner most useful to the secret government and the multi-nationals they controlled. Neither the good of the nation nor the welfare of its citizens were listed as priorities. Of course, education itself became diseased and corrupted by these measures.

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The elite 1% founded not only universities but the Foundations that exist to this day, and for the same purposes of social control. Institutions like the Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie Foundations, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, were primarily created “to perpetuate predatory wealth through the control of information and the sources of information”, and quickly assumed missions of direct influence and control of the mindsets of many of the world’s leaders, or at least influential individuals. The Rockefeller Foundation has been pre-eminent in an astonishing array of social control initiatives that included population control in the real sense through sterilisation and war. And both the Rockefeller and Carnegie institutes funded and promoted the practice of eugenics, Carnegie recommending a national chain of gas chambers to eliminate the socially (and ideologically) unfit.

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All the so-called Foundations and Think Tanks established during the past century shared the purpose of steering society and social thought into desirable channels, and executing massive schemes of social engineering, eventually corrupting the educational system and co-opting all emerging social movements for the benefit of Bernays’ ‘secret government. American society, primarily through the educational system and the use of the new social sciences was being almost totally re-created to serve its ultimate masters.

A memo from the Rockefeller historical archives revealed a concern that their purposes might become public knowledge and be “misinterpreted” since public opinion would naturally be violently opposed to such secret programming. Senators and Congressmen rightly feared these Foundations were dangerous to their society and form of government, and recommended their abolition, but the elected portions of the government have never had the power to control the secret government. The US Congress stated that these foundations, with their wealth and influence, were “a grave menace to the welfare of society” and would be used not only to affect and control the government but to change its form. And try to change its form they would.

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Lippman and Bernays also turned their attention to the manipulation and control of public attitudes toward advertising and commerce, which is why and how the vast propaganda machine transformed American culture into a materialistic consumer society. The consumption orientation was created solely to transfer wealth to the top 1% who owned most of the means of production and who would primarily benefit, mostly the same people constituting Bernays’ “invisible government”. The ease and potential of public manipulation fired the imagination of those who controlled the banks and multinational corporations, their minds opened to the vast potential to increase sales by turning Americans into appropriately conditioned consumers. They realised that if they could condition emotional responses into the subconscious of the American population without the awareness of the people, they could firmly control the purchasing attitudes and habits of an entire nation. And of course this was precisely the result, with the US economy today dependent for 75% of its life on consumer spending, Americans proclaiming this bizarre condition as a universal value and the will of God.

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One instance that crossed my path was exposure to the story boards of a foreign advertising agency in Shanghai tasked with helping an American bank market credit cards to young Chinese. I was appalled at what I saw. The manipulation was to me not only disgusting but obscene. Someone had spent real money to ferret out the hidden desires, fears and aspirations of young Chinese, and turned that knowledge to looting their bank accounts. The conclusions were that these young people, university graduates, were now in an era of rising affluence and desired to be recognised as more than citizens of a third-world country, in a sense to be seen as worthy equals to young people of other nations. They had purchasing power, generally good taste, and wanted to be appreciated as valuable consumers. The recommendations were startling. “Tell him he’s a king. Use the tag line “The world is waiting for you”, and “With our credit card, you can have it all now”. Make him feel he is important and recognised, that he is valued because he is Chinese.” And, since this young person likely came from a one-child family where his wishes were important, “Do everything possible to push the “me, me, me, more, more, more” attitude.”

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“America’s Love Affair with the Automobile” is presented as an expression of independent and freedom-loving America, where inexpensive mass transportation failed to evolve due to Americans’ individuality and desire for freedom, but that is a propaganda myth, a lie of enormous proportion. Today’s US car culture was the result of a massive conspiracy, like the consumer society, imposed on an unsuspecting nation through deceit and propaganda. After execution of the massive fraud, the American people were for generations complimented on their individualism, adventuresome spirit and their love of freedom and independence, and for the choices they believed they made but that had been made for them by others. Here as in no other market is it so true that Bernays’ capitalists were selling “not so much products as emotion itself, psychologically linking the act of purchasing an automobile to falsely-manufactured feelings of confidence, freedom, happiness, empowerment and independence, tying the very self-identity of Americans to the purchase of an automobile.”

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In one of the most criminal and anti-human campaigns ever produced by Bernays and his heirs, a few industrialists conspired to create a reprehensible propaganda offensive to convince the world’s mothers, most especially those in undeveloped countries, to avoid breast-feeding their babies. It was a direct and deliberate attack on one of the most basic of human functions while ignoring the enormous human cost in infant fatalities and illnesses for which they are in most cases directly (or at least indirectly) responsible.

They utilised the services of thousands of physicians, psychologists and psychiatrists, and marketing personnel, to learn how to penetrate the psyche of a new mother to discourage her from breastfeeding her own child. I can recall seeing in several poor countries billboards for baby milk that contained photos of ‘yellow-haired goddesses’, the essential sentiment being communicated was: “Beautiful white women don’t breastfeed their babies. It’s only you backward, uneducated and ignorant brown peasants who do that.” And this from a radio advertisement by US-based Borden milk in the 1950s that played this little song: “The child is going to die because the mother’s breast has given out. Mama o Mama the child cries. If you want your child to get well, give it KLIM milk.” (14) The executives and staff of baby milk companies like Nestlé are even more morally deformed than are those of Big Pharma (who are often owned and controlled by the same people), and have proven they will do whatever is necessary, use any tactics that produce sales, totally heedless to law, ethics or morality.

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Now, the offspring of Lippman and Bernays are spending huge money on psychologists and psychiatrists to fathom precisely what it is about going to a Starbucks or a Wal-Mart that can create a “positive emotional response”. Yes, I know. I almost choked writing that sentence, but these people are serious. They want to identify the underlying stimuli and then fabricate the circumstances in an attempt to provoke that response. If successful, the fake commodity and fake service can disappear to be replaced by a fake emotional experience that you will treasure and one day excitedly relate to your grandchildren. It is all a false reality created with contrived experiences that are not real, but Americans are already on international speaking tours proselytising the new marketing approach. And it’s all fake, in the same way that most of America is fake. Americans promoting this new view seem unable to recognise that any part of their new bible contrasts with reality, and react with offense when Europeans tell them “You Americans are all about image instead of reality. Everything about you is fake and superficial. You people are living in a cliché.”

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In summation, we have a grand conspiracy by a relative handful of people to manipulate and control the perceptions and beliefs of an entire nation of people, entirely for perverted purposes. Perhaps the word ‘conspiracy’ is inaccurate, since these categories of players were in some sense acting independently or at least in different spheres such as advertising and media control or education and politics, but the net result is not different from what would have occurred had there been a tightly-organised conspiracy. Certainly, each knew what the other was doing, and would have been fully aware of the effects of their combined efforts. If we connect these dots, we have the European Jewish bankers and their many huge corporations, and the wealthy US elites exercising enormous control over the US government and effectively taking full charge of American education, of banking and the economy, of industrial production and, most important of all, of the mental and emotional content of the American people.

In every case, there was no concern for the good of the people or of a nation, no value placed on human lives, the human experience, or the human environment. It was only about the money to be derived from social control. Lippman and Bernays are gone, but their mainstay of immoral, manipulative and deceptive practices is as virulent as ever. As Shakespeare told us in Julius Caesar, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones”."

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The Billionaire Syndrome: How Individuals Become Excessively Wealthy

"“A billion dollars is wildly more than anyone needs, even accounting for life’s most excessive lavishes. It’s far more than anyone might reasonably claim to deserve, however much he believes he has contributed to society”(Tom Scocca(1))

Most people who are successful like to believe that their success is due to either intelligence or hard work. However, there are many case studies showing that success for individuals involves many other factors. The economy is rigged to help those who already have wealth(2); those who are born into the right families; those who go to the right schools and universities; those with the right political connections. The billionaire investor, Warren Buffett, has famously said:

   “If I had been a female, my life would have been entirely different…I had two sisters that have every bit the intelligence that I had, have every bit the drive, but they didn’t have the same opportunities.”

Many of the most successful people had opportunities laid out on a plate in front of them. Taking those opportunities involves a combination of luck, gambling, ruthlessness, cheating, talent and hard work.

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In the past, a huge proportion of wealth was inherited. This decreased for a while during the 20th century, when tax rates were very high, but it is now on the rise again because of more complex ways of hiding wealth and avoiding tax. A recent study indicated that one-third of billionaire wealth came from inheritance.(3) There has always been a question about whether it is fair for some people to inherit large fortunes, but there is an additional argument for questioning inheritance. Historically, powerful people and big companies have been ruthless in their pursuit of wealth. This is particularly true with land. Originally, most land was common land, shared by everyone. In Britain, over a period of a few hundred years, the most ruthless landowners took more and more land from everyone else.(4) Much of the wealth that is inherited today was accumulated by previous generations using unethical or criminal means.

All over the world, families form dynasties with significant control over major businesses. The US Walton family, who control Wal-Mart, are perhaps the most famous, with wealth totalling an estimated $215 billion(5) yet the Wal-Mart organisation is notorious for exploiting its employees.

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Most people mistakenly believe that excessively wealthy people are usually entrepreneurs, but in a recent study of the richest 0.1% of the population, it was found that only 4% were entrepreneurs.(6) On the 2014 UK list of 100 richest people, only 2 of them were entrepreneurs. Approximately one-third of people with excessive wealth work in finance, and another third were corporate professionals in other fields. In a study of billionaires from all over the world, it was found that many of them gained their wealth from industries that rely heavily on support from the government, or from businesses that dominate an industry (monopoly).(7)

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It has been suggested that most wealth is due to the inheritance of knowledge from the past, accumulated over thousands of years(19) which means that there really is no such thing as a self-made person.(20) We have a pyramid of knowledge, going right back to the invention of writing and mathematics. All that any one individual or company does is to add a single stone to the top of this pyramid. The developments that take place tend to be a natural evolution of the technology that exists at that moment in time. For example, lots of companies were writing internet search engines at the same time as Google, but Google became dominant (for a variety of reasons, including the support of the US government(21)). If the Google search engine had never been created, a different one (or a small group of them) would probably have become dominant. These people have not done anything exceptional, and do not deserve immense wealth.

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A case study of Bill Gates(26) provides an excellent example for questioning why anyone deserves excessive wealth. His success was partly down to being born in the right family, and involved a great deal of luck. He went to a private school that was one of the first in the world to have a computer for its students to use. At the time computers were rare and expensive. Paul Allen, another co-founder of Microsoft, had also been at the same school. The software that Gates wrote, which became the main operating system for IBM and then for many other computers, was no better than other systems available at the time. His mother had personal connections to the chairman of IBM, and this helped him get the contract that led to the dominance of Microsoft.(27)

The US government had invested immense amounts of money into developing the technology industries as an extension of its military, and then encouraging private firms to develop on the back of this. Gates was in the right place at the right time, as miniaturisation of computer technology was rapidly spreading around the world."

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A Family on Trial for January 6

"Bruno Joseph Cua lives on a three-acre farm in central Georgia with his parents and two younger siblings. The 18-year-old likes to fish and build tree houses; neighbors, family friends, and classmates describe him as hard-working, kind, respectful, and patriotic. He’s not into drugs or alcohol—his biggest high last year was organizing Trump truck rallies in his community.

Before he traveled to Washington, D.C. on January 5 with his mom and dad to hear President Trump’s speech the next day, Bruno was finishing online classes to earn his high school diploma. (His mother, a veterinarian, stopped working years ago to homeschool her children.) Like many teenagers interested in politics, Bruno is a bit of a rabble-rouser and social media loudmouth.

The Cuas, after hearing the president’s speech on January 6, walked to Capitol Hill. Bruno made his way into the building; the teen later posted on Parler that he “stormed the capital (sic) with hundreds of thousands of patriots. Yes we physically fought our way in.”

Now, Bruno Cua sits in jail in Washington, D.C. awaiting trial for his involvement in the January 6 Capitol breach, the youngest of the nearly 300 people so far arrested under the U.S. Justice Department’s “unprecedented” investigation into the events of that day. Unlike tens of thousands of protestors who occupied the nation’s capital for months—including young people who bragged about it in a Washington Post magazine—Cua will be given no mercy.

Neither will his parents, Joseph and Alise.

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...according to federal prosecutors, his rants on Parler make Bruno a national menace. “This small sample of public social media posts on the platform Parler by the defendant in this case evinces a full picture of who this defendant really is: a radicalized man with violent tendencies and no remorse for his participation in the violent insurrection that occurred at the U.S. Capitol,” assistant U.S. Attorney Kimberly Paschall wrote in objection to Bruno’s pretrial release.

Further, Bruno’s refusal to accept that Joe Biden fairly won the presidency is more proof he should stay in jail, prosecutors say. “The offenses committed by the defendant illuminate characteristics inconsistent with a person who could follow orders given by this Court, or indeed, any branch of the federal government. The defendant has espoused disbelief in the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election, and violently acted on that world view.” (The government, both judges and lawyers, routinely cite a defendant’s doubt about last year’s election as evidence of wrongdoing.)

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The government doesn’t just view young Bruno as a threat but also characterizes his parents as threats. Bruno’s father was interrogated by federal prosecutors about his private conversations with his son after the riot, demanding to know why he and his wife didn’t stop him from entering the Capitol, what punishment he faced once they returned home, and why they didn’t do a better job monitoring his social media accounts. Joseph Cua described their frantic attempts to contact their son while he was inside the Capitol, to no avail as cell service was shut down.

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Astoundingly, one prosecutor suggested Bruno had been politically brainwashed by his parents because he doesn’t attend school outside the home. “I don’t believe that home incarceration will work because he is an 18-year-old who’s homeschooled,” assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan Buchanan told a magistrate judge last month. “And so this case did not arise out of him traveling or going different places. It’s simply these things that he has ingested, not just from the Internet.”

Therefore, Buchanan argued, “they are not suitable custodians in part because they may have participated in some of this activity as well.”

At one point, the government warned that Joseph and Alise could be in trouble, too. “It would not be a stretch to say these parents could be charged with crimes of their own, not merely for aiding and abetting the activities of their son, but for unlawful entry on the Capitol grounds if in fact, as the defendant’s father testified under oath, they were present in the restricted area of the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021.”

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“Since he has been arrested, everything has changed for us,” a tearful Alise Cua told Judge Moss this week. “We just want our family together. I don’t even want to even hear the word politics. Bruno feels the same way.”

“We are completely broken.”

And that’s exactly what the U.S. Justice Department wants."

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Coronavirus Fact-Check: Why “New Cases” Are Plummeting

"As you can see, the global decline in “Covid deaths” starts in mid-to-late January.

What else happened around that time?

Well, on January 13th the WHO published a memo regarding the problem of asymptomatic cases being discovered by PCR tests, and suggesting any asymptomatic positive tests be repeated.

This followed up on their previous memo, instructing labs around the world to use lower cycle thresholds (CT values) for PCR tests, as values over 35 could produce false positives.

Essentially, in two memos the WHO ensured future testing would be less likely to produce false positives and made it much harder to be labelled an “asymptomatic case”.

In short, logic would suggest we’re not in fact seeing a “decline in Covid cases” or a “decrease in Covid deaths” at all.

What we’re seeing is a decline in perfectly healthy people being labelled “covid cases” based on a false positive from an unreliable testing process. And we’re seeing fewer people dying of pneumonia, cancer or other disease have “Covid19” added to their death certificate based on testing criteria designed to inflate the pandemic."

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Republicans Against the Family

"Polling consistently shows most mothers would rather stay home than work. Wonks equivocate over why exactly that is because it is difficult for them to accept, as Sarah Landrum writes in Forbes, that simply “many remain in the home because they want to.” That might be frustrating for the keepers of a desiccated order, but, given meaningful policy support, it could be good news for families in general and children in particular.

According to the Pew Research Center, 60 percent of Americans say a child is better off with at least one parent at home. There is a body of evidence indicating that children with a stay-at-home parent experience fewer behavioral problems, and that homeschooled children perform better academically. A 2009 study reported that the proportion of homeschoolers who graduated from college was approximately 67 percent, a figure higher than the one for both public and private school students.

Getting children out of public schools, enabling parents to spend more time with family than in the workforce—these are causes the Republican Party ought to support. Here is a moment in which a fundamentally better kind of society could be attained through the use of pro-family policies. The GOP, after all, professes “traditional values” against a Left out to destroy the family, brainwash children, and eliminate distinctions between the sexes. And yet, weirdly, Utah’s adopted son, Mitt Romney, recently drew fire, not for his usual anti-Trump-inspired backstabbing but for being one of the only Republican lawmakers to propose a pro-family initiative.

Under Romney’s “Family Security Act,” families would receive a monthly check for $350 for preschool-age children and $250 for those of school-age, with a maximum monthly payment of $1,250 per household, administered through the Social Security Administration. Funding for the bill would come from consolidating outmoded and redundant federal policies into direct support for families.

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Naturally, Republicans pounced on Romney on the rare occasion he had a good idea.

“Sending $250/$350 per month/per child to everyone, with no work requirement, is welfare,” tweeted Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). “Being pro-family means being pro-work,” Rubio wrote, adding that the Child Tax Credit expansion he co-sponsored with Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) is a better proposal. But Americans need help now, not at the end of the calendar year. And Rubio misses the more important point: being pro-family means enabling families to spend more time together.

Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) took a line similar to Rubio’s. “275K women left the workforce in Jan.—with many staying home to care for their kids & assist w/virtual learning,” she tweeted. “We must safely reopen our schools, put our kids first, & help get women back to work.” Ernst’s comments mirrored an objection Heritage Foundation analyst Rachel Greszler made about raising the minimum wage.

An increase in the federal minimum wage, wrote Greszler, could result in childcare becoming more expensive. “That could reduce employment by causing some parents—particularly within two-parent families—to stay home with children instead of working,” she added. “To the extent that women would be more likely to stay home than men, this could widen gender-based differences in the labor market.”

Put simply, Greszler accepts the gender pay-gap canard, and uses it as the premise for an argument she is pleased to call “conservative.” Women, according to Greszler and Ernst, should be liberated from the cult of domesticity and chained to the cubicle instead."

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“It All Meant Something. Until It Didn’t”: A Response To Rep. Anna Eshoo

"Rep. Eshoo insisted that the hearing itself was guilty of the type of disinformation that she was combatting in her letter co-authored by Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.). That itself was disconcerting since we were sharing opposing views on the import of her letter, including widely shared views that the letter was pressuring these companies to drop Fox News and other networks from cable programming.

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Eshoo started out by objecting by reading the First Amendment on the government abridging free speech. She then added:

   “The First Amendment prohibits Congress from enacting laws abridging the freedom of speech. . . It does not, however, stop us from examining the public health and democratic implications of misinformation. The idea that members asking questions violates the First Amendment is absolutely absurd; it’s our job to ask questions.”

She then added that she had submitted the letter to the Congressional Research Service (CRS) to see if there was such a violation in the letter. The problem is that I did not say that the letter itself was a violation of the First Amendment. Indeed, my testimony said the opposite while noting that free speech values go beyond the First Amendment. Indeed, I raised the danger of letting members do indirectly what they cannot do directly. Asking the CRS to look for First Amendment violations is about as useful as asking them to look for endangered species violations. It was answering a question not asked.

Ironically, the emphasis on the narrower test under the First Amendment is precisely what some of us have objected to in this and other controversies. As I stated in my testimony:

   What is particularly concerning is the common evasion used by academics and reporters that such regulation is not really a free speech issue because these are private companies and the First Amendment only addresses government restrictions on free speech. As a private entity, companies like Twitter or publishing houses are clearly not the subject of that amendment. However, private companies can still destroy free speech through private censorship. It is called the “Little Brother” problem. That does not alter the fundamental threat to free speech. This is the denial of free speech, a principle that goes beyond the First Amendment. Indeed, some of us view free speech as a human right.

   Consider racial or gender discrimination. It would be fundamentally wrong even if federal law only banned such discrimination by the government. The same is true for free speech. The First Amendment is limited to government censorship, but free speech is not limited in the same way. Those of us who believe in free speech as a human right also believe that it is wrong to deny it as either a private or governmental entity. That does not mean that there are no differences between governmental and private actions. For example, companies may control free speech in the workplaces and companies have been recognized as having their own free speech rights. However, the social media companies were created as forums for speech. Indeed, these companies sought immunity on the false claim that they were not making editorial decisions or engaging in viewpoint regulation. No one is saying that these companies are breaking the law in denying free speech. Rather, we are saying that they are denying free speech as companies offering speech platforms.

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The “chilling” aspect of Eshoo’s letter was also her insistence that there should be “moral” criteria applied in deciding whether to allow viewers to watch Fox News and other networks. The answer should begin with the obvious principles of free speech and the free press, which are not even referenced in a letter pushing for major news outlets to be essentially shutdown. Instead, the companies are asked if they will impose a morality judgment on news coverage and, ultimately, access. This country went through a long and troubling period of such morality codes being used to bar speakers to censor material in newspapers, books, and movies, including feminists, atheists, and other disfavored groups. To invite a return to such subjective standards is alarming, particularly in barring the preferred news sources for tens of millions of citizens. Fox News has long ranked as the most watched cable network for news, and is the primary source of news for tens of millions of citizens. Like CNN and MSNBC, it is also the target of criticism over the balance of its reporting. However, the role of these companies is not to take “adverse actions” against channels because of such objections to the focus or viewpoints exhibited on such channels."

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The Bits and Bytes of The Great Reset: COVID-19 and the Scaling Up of Data-Capitalism

"According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, an economy is “the system of trade and industry by which the wealth of a country is made and used.” For the last few centuries, this system has been dominated by the paradigm of capitalism, in which the private owners of capital, and not the state, control the trade of goods and services.

The slave trade and plantation economy of the early colonial period in America were among the original manifestations of this economic paradigm, as the European propertied classes asserted their newfound power over dwindling tributary systems and the interim feudal arrangements were replaced with John Locke’s quasi-religious notions of private property, which would come to conquer Western economic theory for the next three hundred years.

Today, that paradigm has exhausted the moral justifications its proponents have relied upon to maintain its supremacy and the naked truth of capitalism’s rapaciousness is laid bare, once again, as wealth inequality skyrockets while millions sink into poverty and resource wars continue to ravage entire nations across the world.

Having squeezed every last drop of “value” from the earth, and with no more land to settle or markets to discover, capital’s approaching apotheosis finds it looking for a lifeline by creating a virtual copy of itself, where intellectual property supplants physical property and human biological and behavioral processes are recast as a grotesque form of human labor.

Efforts are now underway to “translate” the real world into a digital counterfeit that can provide financial markets with the figures and statistics it needs to execute the contracts of the incipient human capital markets – an insidious new form of capital assembled from our genetic code and other kinds of data that will form the basis of a financialized wonderland, enforced by blockchain technology and constantly monitored and updated through the burgeoning biosecurity state.

Led by the world’s most powerful hedge funds and transnational corporations, the so-called Great Reset amounts to little more than a campaign to turn humanity into datasets, which they can use to create more profits for themselves and their clients.

For now, they don’t have enough to make it happen and we still have the power to make sure they can’t.

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...Backed by the Rockefeller Foundation and its associated philanthropic organizations, the UN’s SDG program stands out as one of the cornerstones of the Great Reset, which now features Covid-19 as the fulcrum of that project and underlies what pioneering independent researcher Alison McDowell, interviewed by MintPress for this article, calls “theological technofascism.”

Christened as the fourth sector, this merger of “the corporate state […] with nonprofits and religion,” as McDowell puts it, operates through so-called “benefit corporations,” a novel incorporation structure the rules of which were developed and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation’s B Lab. Based on the “environmental social governance” or ESG framework, Certified B Corporations allow company executives to be shielded to a considerable extent from their shareholders and, therefore, provided with an unprecedented measure of freedom as a result of the ostensibly socially and environmentally beneficial entity.

This new face of capitalism intends to function under the aegis of what is referred to as the “Impact Economy” — an idea that arose out of the ashes of the controlled demolition of the global financial system in 2008, which paved the way for hedge funds to replace banks as the dominant force in the world of global capital. That world is currently ruled by The Blackstone Group Inc., which controls a mind-boggling half trillion dollars under asset management, not to mention having the distinction of being the world’s biggest landlord and, ominously, the owner of the largest private DNA database on the planet.

...

In a talk titled “Synthetic Life to Human Health,” Perkins explains how genomics is “going to be the next accelerant in extending high-performance human lifespan” and the four factors that have made this possible. First and foremost is the “radical decrease in the cost of whole genome sequencing,” which fell from approximately three billion dollars initially to roughly one thousand dollars or “about three thousand dollars if you include the analytic component” per DNA code map. The advent of cloud computing, which according to Perkins is “just barely adequate to begin to host this voluminous data, [which allows] us to manipulate and analyze it,” and the mainstream adoption of machine learning (AI) to “interpret” the data round out the next two factors.

Lastly, Perkins highlights the critically important shift from “volume-based health care to value-based health care.” Perkins is referring here to cold, hard cash as the rest of his seminar makes clear, given how genomics “will drive tremendous progress in life and health insurance [as well as] tremendous progress in healthcare delivery by powering a next generation of healthcare and healthcare models.”

“What we are about to embark on,” Perkins boldly predicts, is nothing less than “hacking the software of life,” and “for the first time, trying to understand all the instructions that build, operate and reproduce us as humans.” He illustrates his point with a disturbing anecdote about how genomic pioneer Venter “sat down at a computer with the notion that he could actually design a genome, a sequence of DNA letters; produce that genome artificially; insert it into a membrane and boot up life from scratch.”

Perkins considers that Venter’s 2010 brainstorm might have been even “more important” than the sequencing of the human genome, itself. The eureka moment when a Western scientist developed a God-complex is what will change “medicine from a clinical science supported by data to a data science supported by clinicians,” according to Perkins, who goes on to warn of the “profound disruption in our current format for the practice of medicine,” that he confidently states will no longer “be possible in the place that we’re going very shortly.”

...

In layman’s terms, a social impact bond secures funding for a given social program from private investors, who “risk” their money for a return based upon the “successful” completion of the program’s stated goals. As with any bond, these forms of securitized debt can be traded on the open market just like a repackaged subprime mortgage loan. More specifically, social impact bonds are investment vehicles that are tied to the value of a social service provided by a government entity, such as healthcare, or a function of the state, such as incarceration. It’s net effect, as Leroy points out, results in the transfer of public wealth into private hands.

Alison McDowell’s great contribution has been to track down how and where these kinds of impact investment tools are being tested — drawing the vital link between smart contracts, which rely on blockchain technology, and these new forms of dynamic securitized debt. “The data analytics informs the value of the securitized debt,” she told MintPress, stressing that the data itself will necessarily “be based on ‘baseline’ predictive profiling,” using “very simple and narrow” metrics in order to satisfy the scale and speed required by institutions like Goldman Sachs, which will be handling these assets.

“These are not meaningful numbers in terms of the person who’s in the [social] program,” McDowell says; since the success metrics will not be based on “an individual [data] quarry, it would be [from] groups of people” instead. This crucial fact — reflecting the predatory, common-denominator nature of capitalism — is vital to grasping the inherent danger built into these forms of “social finance” and how the noble-sounding names they’re wrapped in do not mitigate the harm that will inevitably result.

...

Blackstone’s ability to monetize our DNA is not limited by existing markets, however. Its significant stake in healthcare, insurance and retail companies gives the private equity firm the capacity to mix-and-match the collective data sets they own to spin off new segments, along the lines of Ancestry.com’s Spotify partnership to design “DNA-designed music playlists” and other less benign behavioral and genetic dataset combinations.

An “all-encompassing picture of consumer behavior,” as a University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business finance professor describes Blackstone’s enviable position, is only one side of the dystopian coin. Merged with genomic data, these data can produce truly nightmarish scenarios of fascist control. Much of McDowell’s research has focused on the education side of impact investing, which relies heavily on behavioral data via facial recognition and AI to create the financial social investment instruments around schooling.

...

The missionaries of “free-market economics” are pulling out all the stops to convince us that they really do have the people’s best interest at heart this time, after centuries of ceaseless war, ruthless corruption and environmental devastation. Suddenly, a public health emergency has managed to peer into their soulless chasm and not only sparked a long-dead sense of compassion, but coincidentally provided them with all the solutions. The only catch is that we have to give up our humanity and live behind screens and speak to each other via encrypted messaging apps only.

Other than that, they assure us, everything is as it always should have been. They’ve seen the error of their ways and are ready to usher in a more humane, a more “sustainable” economic paradigm, in which the wealthy finally invest in the poor, the sick and the homeless as part of a new “moral” economy. But, the obvious question is, if misery becomes profitable, what incentive is there for its eradication?"

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Whistleblower: 25% of Residents in German Nursing Home Died After Pfizer Vaccine

"In this 40-minute video, Reiner Fuellmich and his associate Viviane Fischer, attorneys and founding members of the German Corona Investigative Committee, interview an unidentified whistleblower at a nursing home in Berlin, Germany.

The whistleblower, a caregiver, describes what happened at the care facility during and after the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. The whistleblower’s voice has been distorted to protect the individual’s identity, and is in German with English subtitles.

The whistleblower describes how seven of 31 nursing home residents with dementia died after the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, and an eighth was near death at the time the interview was recorded.

After the second dose, 11 more residents became seriously ill and one more died.

In other words, 25% of the residents died immediately, and 36% were severely injured within a short time.

The video contains de-identified footage from the nursing home, where a team of three or four people, including a soldier in uniform, vaccinate residents, in many cases using force. The footage is troubling as it shows some people resisting the shots, being being vaccinated nonetheless."

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Seth Jahn Removed from U.S. Soccer Federation’s Athlete Council for Defending National Anthem

"Jahn, who played for the U.S. seven-a-side team in the 2015 Parapan American Games, gave a speech before the organization’s board vote on Saturday.

“I’m sure I’m going to ruffle some feathers with what I’m about to say, especially given the athletes council that I’m on, but given the evolution of our quote-unquote, progressive culture where everything offends everybody, those willing to take a knee for our anthem don’t care about defending half of our country and when they do so, then I don’t have too much concern in also exercising my First Amendment right,” he said Saturday. “We’re here to get a different perspective. I also feel compelled to articulate that I’m of mixed race and representative of undoubtedly the most persecuted people in our country’s history, Native Americans.”

Jahn urged that “95 percent of deaths in black communities come at the hands of another black man.”

“I keep hearing how our country was founded on the backs of slaves, even though approximately only 8 percent of the entire population even owned slaves,” He said. “Every race in the history of mankind has been enslaved by another demographic at some point in time. Blacks have been enslaved. Hispanics have ben enslaved. Asians most recently in our country in the freaking 20th century, have been enslaved. Natives have been enslaved. Whites have been enslaved. Shoot, I lived in Africa for two and a half years where I could purchase people, slaves, between the price of $300 and $800 per person, per head depending on their age, health and physicality.”

“Where were the social justice warriors and on the news journalists there to bring their ruminations to these real atrocities?” he added. “And yet in all of history, only one country has fought to abolish slavery, the United States of America where nearly 400,000 men died to fight for the abolishment of slavery underneath the same star and bars that our athletes take a knee for. Their sacrifice is tainted with every knee that touches the ground.”

Following the speech, the athlete’s council said it had removed Jahn because he “violated the prohibited conduct’s policy section on harassment, which prohibits racial or other harassment based upon a person’s protected status (race), including any verbal act in which race is used or implied in a manner which would make a reasonable person uncomfortable. The athlete’s council does not tolerate this type of language and finds it incompatible with membership on the council. While the council understands that each person has a right to his or her own opinion, there are certain opinions that go beyond the realm of what is appropriate or acceptable.”"

"...including any verbal act in which race is used or implied in a manner which would make a reasonable person uncomfortable." Define "reasonable person" please.

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A Trojan Horse for Woke Education

"The core argument of EAD is, on the surface, a compelling one with widespread support. To wit, that education in civics and history is vital for American citizenship, but this education has been neglected in recent years and must be strengthened. Indeed, Ronald Reagan made a similar argument in his farewell address in which he called for an “informed patriotism.”

EAD proclaims that its project “will require a sweeping national commitment that includes everyone, from educators to school and state administrators to local, state, and federal lawmakers, to parents. It will require a harmonized effort across all jurisdictions—local, tribal, state, and national—to ensure adoption.” (Bold in the original.) Further, a draft report narrative states that K-12 educational “Standards and curricula can and should be developed in alignment with this [EAD] Roadmap.”    

The project insists that “The Educating for American Democracy Roadmap demonstrates that an ideologically, demographically, and professionally diverse group agrees about content and pedagogy.” Since it appears that EAD is about to promote a de facto national curriculum, let us examine this project in some detail.

...

The prevailing mindset of the “Educating for American Democracy” project is clear enough. Louise Dubé, executive director of iCivics, told the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) Rick Hess that civic education “is undergoing a transformation in leadership and rethinking about how diversity and equity must be addressed.” Since the George Floyd protests, she notes, “it’s about realizing that we have been teaching civics primarily from one perspective, that of the white male.”

White male perspective? This is an artificial, meaningless category. Think of D-Day and General Eisenhower versus German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, both white males. Which one represents “the white male perspective”? Dubé further insists, “we no longer gloss over systemic racism, but give students the tools to address it.” iCivics, Dubé declares, “made a commitment to pointing out institutional systemic racism in teaching about our institutions. This will alienate some, but it is the moral imperative of today.”

The current text of an EAD document laments that “students can make it into their teens without knowing, for instance, that George Washington was not only a foundational leader but also enslaved people.” Really? George Washington took people who were free and enslaved them? This is a blatant lie that apparently escaped the notice of the 300 or so educators involved in this project. Obviously, students should learn that Washington was a slaveholder who made provisions for freeing his slaves in his will while also providing for their economic and educational future as free individuals.

With a more than 96 percent majority among the participants and a 75 percent majority on the executive committee, it is not surprising that Educating for American Democracy has produced a left-wing product in tune with the latest theories of the wokerati. They prefer to denigrate George Washington as an active “enslaver,” rather than present him as a slave owner who wrote of slavery in 1786, “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it.”

...

The EAD is not entirely devoid of positive content. There are references to the necessity of a “reflective” and “informed patriotism.” The project states that it is important to leave “space to both love and critique this country” and to cultivate “civic honesty.” No arguments there.

But what role, if any, do conservatives and non-leftists play in the “Educating for American Democracy” project?

...

Interestingly, EAD leaders made a great effort to recruit conservative scholars for the purpose of lending the project a façade of national credibility as a “cross-ideological” and “trans-partisan” initiative. (Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute was particularly active on this score.) An EAD draft statement proudly announces: “We reached a consensus on a substantial educational vision.”

One wonders what kind of national “consensus” agrees that equity (narratives of “oppression”) is preferable to equality under the law; that post-1960s historical scholarship is a “great achievement,” that simple residency in our nation (permanent or transient, legal or illegal) is tantamount to American citizenship; that George Washington was an active “enslaver”;  that training students to be left-wing activists should be at the heart of 21st century civic education.  

Is this what the few conservatives and non-leftists involved in EAD signed up for? Are they improving the product or providing political cover for the debasement of American citizenship education?

...

Under the guise of promoting long-neglected civic education, state legislatures would pass bills requiring courses in civics and history. At the direction of state boards of education, state curriculum specialists (overwhelmingly left-wing) would develop standards, curriculum, and rules that include mandatory teacher certification and licensing requirements “aligned with” the Roadmap of the “cross-ideological” EAD project.

In a fashion similar to the Obama Administration’s promotion of the “voluntary” Common Core agenda, the Biden Administration will claim the initiative is “optional” but use carrots (funding) and sticks (regulations) to promote action civics and the “latest” (meaning most woke) history and civics scholarship as de facto national mandates.  

At the same time, left-wing private foundations would provide lavish funding to train teachers in understanding new forms of “civic engagement” including Ibram X. Kendi’s critical race theory.  

Thus, traditional American citizenship education would be replaced by what the National Association of Scholars describes as the “anti-civics” mindset at the heart of “action civics.”

The Educating for American Democracy project working with the progressive educational establishment and the Biden Administration to “harmonize” and “redefine” citizenship education serves as a Trojan Horse in the ongoing undertaking to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” It must be stopped."

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St. Joseph’s University Professor Suspended For Criticism Of Reparations On Social Media

"In this case, Manco compared slavery reparations to the great-great-grandchild of a murder victim asking the perpetrator’s great-great-grandchild for compensation.  It is easy to see why many would be offended by how he expressed his views, including the statement “Now get this racist reparation bullshit out of your head for good.” However, other academics espousing anti-police or anti-Republican views have used similar language without triggering a campaign for termination.

In this case, students demanded action and the university swiftly complied with an investigation and suspension of Manco. Director of Public Relations and Media Gail Benner told The College Fix that  “We thank our students for bringing to our attention a possible violation of our values. The University launched an investigation into a report of bias. The faculty member will not be in the classroom or in a coaching role while the investigation is conducted.”

The suspension raises that same concern that I had with the recent handling of the case of Law Professor Jason Kilborn who was suspended for using a censored version of the “n-word” on an exam. The suspension and public investigation of Kilborn triggered serious academic freedom questions. The matter could have been investigated further by the university after an initial determination not to change his status. Instead, he was suspended — a decision that clearly will create a chilling effect on other academics at the school.

In this case, there is no connection of Manco’s classes and he not only wrote without reference to his position but did not even write under his own name. Chief Human Resource Officer Zenobia Hargust wrote “The University received several complaints regarding online postings that were allegedly made by you and are of a biased or discriminatory nature.” Those postings were private, off-campus remarks. Yet, he was suspended.  Even if an investigation was warranted, it could have left his status unchanged, particularly in light of a presumption that he is entitled to speak on social and political issues outside of the school.

Indeed, the faculty handbook affirms that right, as Manco himself pointed out.

...

The silence of other faculty at the university (and faculty at other universities) continues to be both conspicuous and alarming. There is a palpable fear that speaking out in defense of the free speech rights of professors like Professor Manco will only make you the next target of criticism or some cancelling campaign. The result is bone-chilling silence from most faculty when fellow professors are targeted for expressing conservative or opposing views on these sensitive subjects. That silence is as damaging as the campaigns targeting faculty members. Historically, censorship and speech controls are used not just to silence a few but to deter many others in the expression of opposing views. Manco will presumably be cleared, but his suspension sends a clear message to others that expressing themselves in public (even anonymously) could result in public investigation and humiliation."

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About That +6.8% GDP Forecast: Remember That GDP = Waste

"We're told the gross domestic product (GDP) measures growth, but what it really measures is waste: capital, labor and resources that are squandered and then mislabeled "growth" for PR purposes. If we only manage what we measure, then we're mismanaging our economy by promoting waste as the only metric we measure and incentivize.

Forecasts now predict a rousing 6.8% "growth" in 2021 GDP. In other words, the amount of resources and capital being squandered is going parabolic and we love it!

50 million autos and trucks stuck in traffic, burning millions of gallons of fuel while going nowhere? Growth! All that wasted fuel adds to GDP. Everyone who works from home detracts from "growth" since they didn't waste fuel sitting in traffic jams. That's bad! Wasting millions of gallons of gasoline is "growth"!

Repaving a little-used road: growth! Never mind the money could have been invested in repairing a heavily traveled road, or adding safe bikeways, etc.--in the current neo-Keynesian system, building bridges to nowhere is "infrastructure growth."

GDP has no mechanism to measure the opportunity costs of squandering capital, labor and resources on investments with marginal or even negative returns.

Buying a new refrigerator to replace a broken one that could have been fixed by replacing a $10 sensor: growth! GDP has no mechanism for calculating the utility still remaining in roads, vehicles, buildings, etc. that are replaced--throwing away all the fixed-investment's remaining utility to buy a new replacement is strongly encouraged because it adds to "growth."

Planned obsolescence that sends everything on a conveyor belt to the landfill is "growth"-- we love the Landfill Economy because all that incredibly needless waste is "growth"!

...

Any economy stupid enough to rely on the insane distortions of GDP "growth" as its primary measure will richly deserve a Darwin Award when it inevitably collapses in a putrid heap of squandered resources and capital. Don't think it won't happen just because it hasn't happened yet."

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Biden’s Syria Attack: An Actual Impeachable Offense

"Last Thursday President Biden continued what has sadly become a Washington tradition: bombing Syria. The President ordered a military strike near the Iraqi-Syrian border that killed at least 22 people. The Administration claims it struck an “Iranian-backed” militia in retaliation for recent rocket attacks on US installations in Iraq.

As with Presidents Obama and Trump before him, however, Biden’s justification for the US strike and its targets is not credible. And his claim that the US attack would result in a “de-escalation” in the region is laughable. You cannot bomb your way toward de-escalation.

Biden thus joins a shameful club of US leaders whose interventions in the Middle East, and Syria specifically, have achieved nothing in the US interest but have contributed to the deaths of many thousands of civilians.

President Trump attacked Syria in 2018 in what he claimed was retaliation for the Assad government’s use of chemical weapons against its own citizens. The Trump Administration never proved its claim. Logic itself suggests how ridiculous it would have been for the Syrian president to have used chemical weapons in that situation, where they achieved no military purpose and would almost certainly guarantee further outside attacks against his government.

Trump’s 2018 attack only added to the misery of the Syrian people, who suffered under US sanctions and then suffered President Obama’s “Assad must go” intervention that trained and armed al-Qaeda affiliated groups to overthrow the government.

Trump’s airstrike on Syria did nothing to further real American interests in the region. But sending in 100 Tomahawk missiles to blow up a few empty buildings did a great deal to further the bottom line of missile-maker Raytheon."

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Dreaded QAnon March 4 Uprising Fails to Materialize in the Capitol

"“There was never a threat to the Capitol,” tweeted investigative journalist Jordan Schachtel, going on to explain the real reason for the security theater in D.C.

“I tracked the ‘intel bulletins’ when they attempted this stunt the 1st time. Fake intel justifies the military occupation, which justifies the narrative, which justifies the canceling of your rights, which justifies labeling you the enemy.”

...

According to new reports, two upcoming dates could potentially inspire “right-wing extremists” to to storm the Capitol again:  March 20, when the Republican party was founded, and April 15,  federal income tax day.

Capitol Police have now asked for the National Guard’s “mission” to be extended by two more months. About 5,200 guardsmen remain on duty in Washington, costing U.S. taxpayers $2 million per week."

They're going to keep kicking that can until they get to early 2022 and can then use the upcoming elections as pretext. Now that they've pushed it to May the next can kick can be related to protests that will begin to flare up around that time as warm weather ushers in the beginning of protest season.

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Biden’s New Presidential Clothes Are an Illusion

"Biden and company have more than a few allies in their push to sell these lies to the public, both in the Washington D.C. establishment and in mainstream media.

The mainstream media will certainly do the best that it can under these awful circumstances to sell the illusion of “Biden’s Magnificent New Clothes.” Still, even as they loudly shout out effusive praise for Biden’s many unpopular moves, gaffes, and lies, this doesn’t mean much of the nation believes what it is being told.

But a point many people miss about the nature of propaganda and how it is used is this:

Propaganda isn’t just to try to condition people to believe what isn’t true. That’s only half of what dishonest people use propaganda for. The other half of propaganda’s usefulness is to keep people from speaking up and challenging the lies by making them think they are in the minority, that they are powerless, and there’s no reason to speak up.  A relentless stream of propaganda is used to keep the big lies from being publicly challenged.

Remember, in the fairy tale; it was the peer pressure of seeing all the important people saying the same absurdity that caused the people beholding the naked emperor to hesitate to speak up. And this propaganda is not only used to keep the public from talking back too loudly; it is also utilized to create the impression of a monolithic mainstream media where nobody can break ranks by going against the commonly accepted political narrative."

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WATCH: Leftist protestors 'storm' Georgia state capitol to protest voter ID laws

"Georgia's state legislature passed a new voter ID law, and leftists in the state were so upset by it that they stormed the state capitol.

In the video, an officer can be seen instructing the demonstrators that they are "in violation of 16113441." A woman approaches the officer, putting her face up against his megaphone, and another officer tries to lead her away, taking her arm, saying "step aside ma'am." She resists.

"You will disperse immediately or you will be arrested," the first officer tells the encroaching crowd. The group of protestors does not disperse, and the officers continue to tell them they are in violation. The woman continues to argue with the officer.

This "storming of the capitol" went largely unnoticed by media despite their ongoing concerns about the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol in Washington, DC.

The protestors who entered the Georgia state capitol in Atlanta were reacting to a voter ID law that was passed which adds restrictions to voting. Primarily, the bill requires a photo ID for absentee ballots, limits the time a voter has to request an absentee ballot, and put restrictions on the location of and access to ballot drop boxes."

Insurrection! Coup! Domestic Terrorists! Sedition! (Democrats, am I doing this right?)